lomonaaeren

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Chapter Thirty-Three—Call to Battle

“The magic, of course, is different than the kind we used when we made the map of Hogwarts,” Remus said, gesturing with one hand as he sipped from the cup of apple juice in front of him. He seemed to be more relaxed and more cheerful than Sirius had ever seen him since the Weasley twins had come to Hogwarts. “Since it’s not like we can go to the Ministry and scout around, and Fred and George and I have only visited the Ministry a few times between all of us, so we don’t know every room, either.”

Sirius concealed a smile. “Of course.”

“So instead, we’re reaching out to the building from a distance with woven strands of moonlight and starlight.”

Sirius jolted and sat up in his chair. Remus glanced sideways at him. “What?”

“You know very well what. You’ve always refused to use moon magic because of the moon’s connection to werewolves!”

Remus’s mouth firmed, and he took another sip of apple juice. He didn’t say anything.

“Well?” Sirius demanded. They were in his room, and Remus was sitting on Sirius’s bed with Sirius in the chair across from him. And Remus had just dropped that revelation there casually and didn’t appear disposed to say anything about it. “Well?”

“I went so far with embracing other werewolf qualities in myself while you were imprisoned, Sirius. Why did you assume that I would keep refusing to use moon magic?”

“Because you said you’d refused it, right after I got out of Healing here for the first time!”

Remus sighed and nodded. “I had to—I embraced so much else about myself, so much that I used to think of as monstrous,” he whispered. “I had to have something to cling to that would separate me from that, from—other werewolves who had gone as deep as Fenrir Greyback went. So refusing moon magic it was.

“But lately, what with being an acknowledged werewolf here and so few people flinching from me, and spending ten years as a monster in most people’s eyes, and becoming a mentor to students who practically worship me…”

Sirius hid a smirk. He got along well with Fred and George too, but Moony was the one who had really taken the lead in mentoring them, partially because Sirius was always busy with Sophia and Constance. The twins would have put down a red carpet in front of Remus every meter he walked, if they were allowed.

“It seemed silly to hold onto that,” Remus finished softly. “If there’s some kind of problem with moon magic, or if I really did start becoming a monstrous werewolf, I knew people who would hold me back.”

Sirius nodded slowly. Then he reached out and clapped his friend’s shoulder, while shoving him at the same time. Remus caught hold of himself and blinked at Sirius. “What?”

“If you had changed your mind when we were still in school, just imagine how much more we might have got away with,” Sirius lamented, shaking his head.

Remus laughed. “We got away with more than enough.”

“Well, yeah,” Sirius said, and it became an afternoon ranging between reminiscence and theoretical uses of moon magic and back.

*

The runes Harry had gifted to him were fascinating. And frustrating.

Tom could tell that they were most likely the runes he had been looking for, simply because of the way they seemed to spark when he wrote them on a parchment that contained a copy of the alchemical ritual. But that didn’t mean that they taught him where they slotted, or which ones had to be placed first, or what they meant. Tom was almost coming to believe that they didn’t mean anything by themselves, that only in certain arrays would they come to life or reach out to the rest of the array and become imbued with meaning.

He knew that the alchemical ritual was important. He knew the runes were important. He knew they fit together.

But beyond that insight, he couldn’t go.

“Sir?” Lavinia asked when she knocked on his office door one evening. “I wanted to talk to you about one of Angelina’s projects—are you all right?”

“Yes, fine, Lavinia,” Tom said, leaning back from the parchments. He needed to control himself it he was revealing so much frustration and anger to his professors. The outcome of the war could not depend on these rituals or runes. They would help, that was all. Tom had come too far in setting up a multi-pronged plan for the war to let it go now. “Now, what about Angelina’s project?”

Lavinia eyed him as though she wanted to talk to him about the parchments instead, but nodded and sat down in the chair across from his desk. “Angelina has come up with a plan that might ensure we could have some income in the Muggle world.”

Tom blinked. “Has she?” He had made sure that certain places in the Muggle world were defended and that students of Fortius could hide there if they needed to, such as if a Hunt came for them. But he hadn’t made that many attempts to establish a foothold there. Muggles deserved to be defended if it came down to it, but he also thought it best to leave the vast majority of them ignorant of the magical world.

“Yes. You know that she has the ability to manipulate runes to find lost objects? Certain kinds of magic?”

“Yes.” Angelina had been working to build those kinds of runes into Fortius’s defenses, as a back-up to the wards that would sense hostile intent.

“She thinks she might be able to use them to find precious metals and gems, too.” Lavinia smiled. “Not ones that have merely been lost by Muggles or are in their possession already, as that would be too risky, but in their natural state. She could locate them, and some of our people who are more talented with earth magic could manipulate the soil and stone to release the metal and gems in as pure a form as possible.”

Tom leaned back in his chair, a small smile forming on his face. Yes, that would be useful. And while he didn’t know every nuance of the Muggle world, he did know there were places like Knockturn Alley where gold and silver and gems could be sold without too many questions, and other places slightly better that would accept those things for a higher price.

“Tell Angelina that she has my permission to go ahead with this,” Tom murmured. Angelina might have brought the idea to him herself, he thought. But she was a student, if one finishing up her seventh year, and in slight awe of him as a professor. “Be sure that you know who is best at earth magic and should accompany her on her travels.”

Lavinia nodded. She stood, gave the parchments on his desk one last look, and said, “I wish you good luck as you wrestle with this problem, sir.” Then she turned and walked out of the office.

Tom stared at the parchments, sighed, and shoved them roughly away. He wasn’t making any progress like this. He would take some time away from the ritual and runes and see if the solution might be clearer when viewed from a distance.

*

Minerva spent some time each evening strolling around Hogwarts in her Animagus form. It was the sort of thing that might have drawn the attention of Headmistress Carrow, so Minerva had never specifically mentioned it. But it also wasn’t against the rules that the Ministry had promulgated, either. Animagi were still so rare that there weren’t many rules that pertained specifically to them, except registration.

Minerva was heading down one of the corridors that led back to her office when she smelled two people who should have had no reason to be near this place. Her first thought was that Carrow had brought Archibald Geraldson, one of the Ministry inspectors assigned to run regular investigations of Hogwarts, to capture her. She tensed all her muscles and crept to the corner nearest her office, putting down her paws with more than silence.

But Geraldson was speaking of someone else.

“—an example?”

“It’s time that we do make an example of him,” Carrow said harshly. “We must make it clear that not even the mildest forms of dissent will be tolerated. And the portraits have told me that he is continually attempting to enter the Restricted Section of the library.”

“Do they know in pursuit of what?”

“Historical books, it seems, from what he has looked at the few times he has gained entrance. He will be reading forbidden material next, unless we are careful. And then you know that he might influence his grandmother, who is a nuisance herself.”

The little bit of Minerva’s fur that wasn’t already standing on end puffed out. She knew whom they were talking about.

“Very well,” Geraldson said. “Then I’ll need to speak to the portraits, and make it clear that they’re to be ready to repeat their stories to me and the other inspectors.”

“That will be no problem.”

Their footsteps moved, coming towards the corner. Minerva whisked silently back down the corridor, into a shadow that they wouldn’t be able to see for at least another few seconds, and then jumped. There was a small shelf embedded in the wall of the corridor here, one that would normally have held a bust but had been empty for years. Minerva landed on it and lashed her tail into place around her.

Geraldson and Carrow passed beneath her. As a cat, Minerva’s eyes were keener in the dim light than theirs were, and she would also have seen any small twitch of body language indicating that they’d seen her, attuned to such motions as she was in a predator’s form.

Neither of them looked up or otherwise indicated that they’d noticed her.

Minerva let a few more minutes go past when they’d left, tucking intense control around herself to keep her tail from lashing or her claws from shooting. There was always the chance that they had left eavesdropping spells lingering, or told portraits to spy on her.

But nothing happened. Minerva jumped back to the floor, stretched if she was lazily waking from a nap, and paraded back to the door of her office. She let herself in and renewed some of the protections that kept other people from using any sort of spies in her office, whether they were portraits or not.

Then she transformed and fell to her knees, folding her arms around her head.

They were going to use Neville Longbottom for the entertainment at the Leaving Feast, and Minerva knew that his grandmother—as stubborn and pigheaded as Geraldson had described her—wouldn’t believe a warning from her. Algernon Longbottom might have, but he also would have taken it to his sister; he wasn’t capable of an independent thought on his own. And Alice and Frank Longbottom, although not close personal friends of the Minister in the way Arthur Weasley was, were fully entrenched in the power structure and would have ignored her, sure that this could never happen to them.

This is the end, then. The end of this term is the end of my time at Hogwarts. And I can’t warn Longbottom ahead of time. I’ll have to do it the day of and make it a kidnapping.

Minerva took a deep breath and stood. Yes, it was a harder task than she would have liked, and she didn’t have the advance warning that had made Fred and George’s removal comparatively easier. But she still had an ally in Hogwarts. She could tell Severus.

And she could reach out to Tom Riddle, and warn him what was coming, and ask for help.

*

“I take it that you have assembled everyone you need then, Alicia?”

Lucius ran his eye over the team that she had lined up in front of him. She had chosen three Unspeakables, three Aurors, and five Hit Wizards. She also had an accountant, to give the impression of a legitimate mission, and two Hounds, howling and straining at the leashes of her will. Hounds did what they did best when they were given a target.

But Alicia had raw power to spare. She held the Hounds in check with her will alone, and gave Lucius a complacent smile.

“Yes, Minister. I think that we could use a little more warpower, but…” She shrugged. “Riddle is Headmaster of the school. The other professors and the students will be used to obeying him. Once I give his name to the Hounds, then there will be too much confusion and chaos on his part to give effective orders. And he won’t be able to handle two by himself.”

Lucius nodded. He had met Riddle numerous times, and while the man sometimes acted as though he hid resentment under the veneer of gratitude, he had never struck Lucius as particularly powerful. Not like the Roland Peverell of dreadful memory.

Lucius shook off the memory and glanced at the Unspeakables, the Aurors, the Hit Wizards. “You have the means to hide yourselves?”

One of the Unspeakables raised what looked like a golden amulet with a design of a spiderweb on the front, anchored by sapphires, and touched the center of the web. There was a small flash, and Lucius found himself glancing at the other two Unspeakables. He tried to turn his head to look at the third, and literally could not.

Lucius laughed, even as he made a mental note to himself that he would require all the notes on the magical theory behind the developing of that amulet, to ensure it could never be used against him or his lord. “Excellent. And you all have these amulets?”

Alicia showed him hers, before she tucked it back underneath her robes. “Yes, sir. The Hounds won’t, but I’ll bind them to their target once we get to the gates of Fortius, and they’ll be going too fast for anyone to stop, in any case.”

Lucius nodded and reached out to shake her hand gravely. “Then good luck, and Merlin go with you.”

*

Harry prowled back and forth inside his room. He’d woken restless, and it hadn’t gone away all day. He paused and stared out his window. The day looked back at him, pleasant and calm and cloudy. It wasn’t even very hot.

Harry bared his teeth and shook his head. There were warnings echoing around inside his head, but they had no direction. He couldn’t exactly go to Professor Riddle and declare, “Sir, my magic says that the war might start in an hour or three days.”

He’d barely slept last night, and he was aware that was addling his perceptions, perhaps affecting them so negatively that he couldn’t trust them at all. Harry sighed, sat down on his bed, and folded his arms. He would never be the kind of Legilimens Hermione was, but he had managed to become good enough at Occlumency to at least calm and clear his mind.

He had sunken some of his restlessness into the calm ground at the bottom of his mind when a single diamond-bright needle bored into the center of his thoughts.

Danger. Danger, coming now!

Harry scrambled to his feet, breathing heavily. Yes, he could sense the danger now, coming this way, coming today, coming to the gates.

Harry had never tried to command the magic of Gryphon House that protected them, but he thought that he could ask it for a favor. “Hey, magic,” he said, and felt the ceaseless churning of warmth around his shoulders pause for a moment. “Can you take me to Professor Riddle?” He could Apparate now, but not within the grounds, and he had no broom. The enchantment was his best bet to get there in time.

Silence, for a long enough moment that Harry didn’t think the enchantment had heard him. And then gryphon wings stretched into being around his shoulders, and Harry’s feet left the ground.

The enchantment hurled him through the corridors of Gryphon House, and out the nearest window. Harry tried not to be sick as he looked down at the ground speeding below them. Then he decided that he was just going to fix his eyes straight ahead, on the building that held Professor Riddle’s office, and watch it get steadily closer.

Inside him, his magic was stretching and growling, pacing in circles like a restless panther. Harry smiled, a little grimly. He was a war wizard, and war had come to him at last.

He would be glad to face it.

*

Alicia took a deep breath as her entourage appeared at the gates of Fortius. She suspected that some of their defenses would sense her people, despite the amulets, and report them to the Headmaster. But it didn’t matter.

She had intended to present a small deception if necessary, and pretend they really had come only to inspect Fortius’s finances, hence the presence of their accountant. But now that she was so close to the school, it wasn’t necessary.

She recognized intent wards woven around the walls, the sort of powerful ones that half-bloods were forbidden from casting and Mudbloods were incapable of.

Alicia clucked her tongue and turned towards her people. The three Unspeakables straightened, and the Aurors gripped their wands. The Hit Wizards looked a little more cautious, but their battle training, more limited than that of the Aurors, would still be enough to handle the weaklings they would encounter here.

“I will loose the Hounds,” she said, ignoring the deafening howls that broke from behind her. “In the meantime, I want you to storm the gates. They’re the weakest point in the wards.” Gates always were, no matter how strong the defenses. “Be prepared to enter the moment they’re broken.”

The nearest Unspeakable nodded, and activated their amulets. Alicia touched her own, vaguely aware of the others doing the same, and turned to face the Hounds, the only members of the group she could see at the moment. They slavered, long streams of drool running away from their jaws and making the grass die where it landed.

Alicia snapped the leash of her will, and the Hounds focused on her. Alicia smiled. They had been formed from Mudbloods kept in a dark room of the Ministry, and their coats were black, and their jaws and eyes shining white.

“Tom Riddle,” she said. “He is your target.”

Their mad and maddening howls filled the air, and then the Hounds charged the gates and blurred through them. Alicia didn’t know if that would weaken the protective spells on the gates, but it couldn’t strengthen them, and she thought some of the spells would fall in any case when the Hounds killed the Headmaster.

She nodded to her people and stepped out of the way so they could get at the gates. “Batter them.”

*

Tom was on his feet with his wand drawn by the time the threat landed in his office, and he nearly dropped his wand when he saw that it was Harry in the grip of his House enchantment. “Harry?” he asked warily, straightening. “What are you doing?”

“I got it to bring me to you faster,” Harry said. “The threat is at the gates. The beginning of the war.” His eyes were a paler green than normal, and glowing with an almost pearly color that reminded Tom of the reflections in a crystal ball. “I’m sure of it, sir.”

Tom started to answer, and then jerked his head sideways at the familiar calls rising up from the school gates. Hounds. Brought here.

And told to hunt him, most likely, although Tom could not be certain of that. What he knew was that cold rage had formed in him, and was now preparing to move, like a glacier.

How dare they come here? How dare they endanger my people? Even if the Hounds were solely focused on him, they could still injure others that they perceived as getting in the way.

“Harry,” Tom said, hardly recognizing his own voice. “Look at me.”

His long mentorship of Harry and the trust built up between them served them well now. Confused but obedient, Harry looked up at him, and Tom dived into his eyes and snapped the Legilimency bonds that had held the full extent of his power back. Harry’s eyes widened.

As the howls drew nearer, Tom snapped, “Get your enchantment to take you to Belasha’s dome. Set her free.” He was concentrating, drawing on the connections that tied him to the enchantments and the buildings of the school, slamming shutters and doors and stealing away the people who were free on the grounds to the safety of their Houses or quarters. “Go.”

Harry’s eyes remained wide, but he nodded, and the gryphon enchantment coalesced into animal form again and snatched him into the air. Tom swung to face the Hounds, dropping the bonds that kept his own magic sealed away. It stretched lazy wings around him and spiraled into the air, and Tom couldn’t help a certain delight in its freedom, for all that he hadn’t planned on revealing his strength to the Ministry personnel so soon.

It would not matter. None of them would be leaving Fortius alive.

Tom turned to face the Hounds, smiling as they blurred through the wall of his office.

*

Harry scrambled, panting, towards the doors of Belasha’s dome as the gryphon enchantment dropped him next to it. He couldn’t speak Parseltongue, but he had the sense to keep his eyes closed as he blasted the doors with a concentrated burst of power, opening them the only way he knew how.

He heard the basilisk’s deep hiss as she slithered out. Professor Riddle had said something once about her understanding English, so Harry kept his eyes shut as he bowed low to her.

“Um, hello, Great One,” he said, and managed not to stammer. “Please defend the school. There’s Ministry people here, and some kind of howling creature.”

Belasha hissed in what sounded like satisfaction—what Harry hoped was satisfaction—and slithered past him. Harry stood still, shivering. He might be a war wizard, but the sensation of death still cloaked Belasha and moved with her like a cold wind. He didn’t dare look until he felt the earth stop trembling under her motion.

Then he straightened and opened his eyes, and hesitated. Professor Riddle hadn’t told him what to do next. Part of Harry wanted to head back to Gryphon House and let Professor Riddle and Belasha handle this. They probably could.

But why had Professor Riddle snapped the bonds on Harry’s power, if he was meant to just go back to his House and hide there?

Harry took a deep breath and asked the enchantment to take him to the top of Belasha’s dome. From there, he should be able to see more of what happened, and whether his interference would even be needed.

Part of him hoped it wouldn’t, if only because people who could handle a full-grown basilisk and someone as powerful as Professor Riddle were probably too dangerous for a teenage war wizard to kill.

But part of him was still the panther, not pacing back and forth now but crouching inside him, filling his muscles with silent, coiled power. Harry shivered with delight and anticipation and something so strong that it felt like being drunk.

He wanted to kill them. Warfare was what he was made for.

And that part of him was tired of waiting.

*

Alicia jerked as she felt her connection with the Hounds tremble and ripple. Something was wrong. They had encountered unexpected opposition.

Alicia was trying to remember whether there were any purebloods who might have thrown their lot in with Riddle when a maelstrom of magic broke out above the grounds, and she staggered from the force of it. Two of the Unspeakables cried out, from the sound of their voices, thrown to the earth from where they had been working on the gates.

He does have a pureblood, Alicia thought, swallowing. Perhaps Roland Peverell has joined with him. Or perhaps he was visiting and is handling the Hounds because he takes a poor view of them hunting an ally.

A moment later, the ground began to shake. Alicia backed up a step, her wand raised. Were there defenses that could cause an earthquake inside Fortius? It seemed a bizarre choice, to destroy one’s own school, but Minister Malfoy had shown her those reports that revealed the smaller size of half-bloods’ brains—

A great green head rose above the gates, and Alicia barely closed her eyes before she met the basilisk’s gaze.

Fuck, she had time to think, and then the real battle began.